Fat isn’t a bad word.

Body Liberation

Fat Positive

HAES Aligned

Anti Diet Culture

If you’ve found this page, you may be wondering if relief from self-loathing, dieting cycles even exists. You may feel like a failure for not reaping the supposed “quick fix” benefits that fad diets, detoxes, cleanses, and brutal exercise routines deliver promise, but rarely deliver. I’ll let you in on a little secret - nothing is wrong with you or your body. In 2023, the global market for weight loss and weight management diets attained a value of nearly $175.44 billion. What other industry has a 95% fail rate, but still manages to make hundreds of billions of dollars? None. In other words, it’s a garbage yet profitable ploy to make us dislike our bodies. Weight stigma and capitalism go hand in hand.

I’ve found freedom in making peace with my body and rejecting the toxic standards of diet culture. Now, I find so much joy in helping others do the same. I work with my clients to gradually repair their core wounds relating to body acceptance and self-worth. Together, we can unpack how painful messages from their family of origin, society, and current relationships have fostered a negative, often distorted, perception of their body. We will systematically work to unlearn these internalized beliefs and replace them with neutral or positive insights. Don’t worry - I’m not one of those toxically positive therapists. I understand you may not feel like you can truly embrace and love every part of your body all the time. That’s why I focus on Body neutrality, or the act of taking a neutral stance toward your body – both emotionally and physically, rather than body positivity.

I firmly believe healing does not occur within a vacuum, so we will determine if referrals to nutritionists, body workers, and/or other body neutral providers are needed. As a larger bodied person who has been poorly treated in medical and wellness settings, I take vetting these referrals very seriously. I aim to collaborate with fellow professionals who offer you the care and respect that all people deserve.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • To me, being “fat positive” means that I am working to challenge harmful societal stigmas and discrimination against individuals who are overweight.

    I believe we should accept, respect, and celebrate of people of all body sizes, particularly those who exist in larger bodies.

    I argue that body weight and size should not be used as markers of worth or value, and that everyone deserves to feel confident and comfortable in their own bodies, regardless of their size.

    I vehemently reject harmful diet culture norms that prioritize thinness as the ideal standard of beauty.

  • "Diet culture" refers to the societal obsession with dieting, weight loss, and thinness, often at the expense of mental and physical health. It encompasses a wide range of beliefs, practices, and norms that promote the pursuit of thinness as an ideal standard of beauty and equate it with health, success, and moral virtue.

    I say: Fuck diet culture.

  • HAES is an acronym that stands for “Health At Every Size”.

    The Health At Every Size Principles promote health equity, support ending weight discrimination, and improve access to quality healthcare regardless of size.

    According to The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH), the Health at Every Size Principles are:

    • Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.

    • Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs.

    • Eating for Wellbeing: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.

    • Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.

    • Life Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.

    To learn more about HAES, visit ASDAH’s website.

Recommended Reading

  • "You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths About Fat People

    by Aubrey Gordon

  • What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

    by Aubrey Gordon

  • The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

    by Sonya Renee Taylor

  • Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

    Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

    by Da’Shaun Harrison

  • Fearing the Black Body The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

    Fearing the Black Body - The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

    by Sabrina Strings

  • Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

    Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

    by Virginia Sole-Smith

Fat Positive & Weight Neutral Podcasts

  • Maintenance Phase

    Hosted by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon

  • Fat Positive... Everything Podcast

    Fat Positive... Everything Podcast

    Hosted by Kayla Stansberry

  • Fat and Fucked Podcast

    Hosted by Dr. Krista Nabar & Suzy Hooker

  • Eat The Rules Podcast

    Hosted by Summer Innanen

  • She's All Fat: A Fat Positive Podcast

    She's All Fat: A Fat Positive Podcast

    Hosted by Sophie Carter-Kahn

Community Events

  • Philly FatCon is an annual convention for fat people, by fat people. This year’s convention is being held November 1 & 2, 2025.

  • Fan Con, the biggest fat convention on the west coast is celebrating its third year January 16-18, 2025 in Seattle.

    Fat Con has hours of programming, amazing keynote speakers, a fashion show, a marketplace and more. Fat Con is geared towards generating Fat Joy and building a Fat Community.

  • The Fat Fridays Social Club is hosted by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. It is held via Zoom and is an affinity space only for people who identify as fat. (Ages 18+)

  • Two fat positive communities Plush DMV and Body Liberation Baltimore have joined forces to create the Plush Bodies Book Club!

    This group meets monthly and offers safe space for folks in larger bodies to come together and discuss fat literature.

    You can Register online, by clicking this link.

Fellow Fat Positive / Body Neutral Providers

Baltimore & Online Based Providers Serving folks in Maryland.

    • Robin Harris, L. Ac, is a licensed acupuncturist who practices through a lens of body positivity in the Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland

    • Kayla Stansberry, LCPC, IEC is a person centered clinician, with a foundation of feminist theory, mindfulness, humanistic theory based in Maryland. Kayla is a Certified Intuitive Counselor which allows me to specialize in body image, eating disorders and disordered relationships with food and movement

    • Open Lines Counseling: Founder and Psychotherapist, Melissa Weinberg, LCPC, and therapist, Gianna Rico, LMSW, are passionate about working with their clients to dismantle anti-fat bias and help those who struggle with disordered eating/exercise or body image to find a more balanced and trusting relationship with their bodies. They offer in person services in Baltimore, MD as well as telehealth appointments for clients residing in the state of Maryland.

    • Tamara Pincus, LCSW-C, CST, is a licensed clinical social worker with over 15 years of experience in mental health treatment. She is an AASECT certified sex therapist with a specialty in working with kinky, polyamorous and LGBTQIA+ clients. Her practice has a commitment to racial justice. She has experience using cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, mindfulness and imago approaches in therapy with individuals and people in relationships. She is licensed to see clients in DC, MD, and VA.

    • Emily Dufrane, LCPC, owns and operates Sacred Crow Counseling Servces in Baltimore, Maryland. Emily recognizes that healing from body and weight trauma encompasses three key factors: Intuitive Eating, Body Image Work, and Mindful Movement.

    • Joia Peirce, LCPC, uses a person-centered and trauma-informed approach, drawing on DBT, IFS, ACT, and polyvagal techniques, and grounded in anti-racist, feminist, and HAES lenses.

    • Nat Cone is a personal trainer in Baltimore, MD who loves supporting beginners that may be feeling a little nervous about taking the first step on their fitness journey.

    • Bianca Russo is an online movement coach who uplifts you exactly as you are, and propels you toward alignment in body and mind. Bianca focuses on integrating your strengths creates more opportunities for you.

    • 410 Fitness is a place where people of all identities, races and body-types can feel welcome to move, feel good and work hard. Their workouts have scalability and they can make every movement fit your skill level.

    • Alliance Physical Therapy: Dr. Lizzie Bellinger, PT, DPT, OCS, COMT and Dr. Leah Flamm, PT, DPT, OCS, COMT, CMTPT/DN provide a thorough physical examination and diagnosis. They explain what they find and how they can help. They show you what you can do to help yourself. They create a welcoming space for healing and rehabilitation. Every staff member is dedicated to providing top quality LGBTQIA+ care, including for folks post gender affirming surgery.

    • Bread & Salt Nutrition is a virtual private practice offering nutrition and body image counseling. Brett offers services through a Health at Every Size® and Anti-capitalist lens.

    • Rebecca Bitzer & Associates work with clients as a team to bring the joy back to eating by helping you achieve your goals, one meal at a time.


    • Courage to Nourish has a mission to support their clients in reconnecting to their bodies to live a full and authentic life without food fears holding them back. They practice exclusively from an anti-diet, intuitive eating, and body liberation standpoint.

The link below directs you to a PDF of my doctoral project defense presentation. In persuit of my PhD, I opted to write a book titled, Curves Unbound: Sexual Pleasure as a Means of Liberation for Fat Women.

Curves Unbound: Sexual Pleasure as a Means of Liberation for Fat Women

  • "We need a world that insists upon safety and dignity for all of us—not because we are beautiful, healthy, blameless, exceptional, or beyond reproach, but because we are human beings.”

    Aubrey Gordon, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

  • “I said to my body. softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ it took a long breath. and replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.”

    Nayyirah Waheed

  • “We have to get reacquainted with our own innate preferences. We must decide for ourselves what we like and dislike, and how different foods make us feel when we aren’t prejudging every bite we take. It takes its own kind of relentless vigilance to screen out all that noise. It requires accepting that the weight you most want to be may not be compatible with this kind of more intuitive eating—but that it’s nevertheless okay to be this size, to take up the space that your body requires.”

    Virginia Sole-Smith, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America